The existence of God

KsmMBtiafiknit^ :

mmt%

UC-NRLF

$B 565 =l=ia

LIBRARY

OF THE

University of California.

Class

WESTMINSTER LECTURES

Edited by Kev. FEANCIS AVELING, D.D.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

BY THE

Right Rev. Mgr. CANON MOYES, D.D.

LONDON AND EDINBURGH
SANDS & COMPANY

ST LOUIS, MO.
B. HERDER, 17 South Broadway

1906

-^— ^ ^ ^

PREFACE

In the list of lectures delivered at Westminster
Cathedral Hall, the first had for its subject the
*' Proofs for the Existence of God."

To deal exhaustively with the proofs as a
whole would have required not a lecture but a
treatise. What the reader will find in the pages
that follow is not an attempt to treat the subject
fully or technically, but an effort to indicate in a
broad and general way, the lines on which it is
thought that the proofs of God's existence may be
conveniently stated.

It is a need of our rational nature to interro-
gate the things which we see, and to ask the
reason of their existence. And if this is true
with regard to any single phenomenon, or group
of phenomena, it must be emphatically more so
when we are face to face with the Universe as a
whole. Hence the great question as to the
origin and destiny of the Universe — the whence,
the why, and the whither — is inextinguishable

3

1G4917

4 PREFACE

in the human mind. Man from the earliest
times when he looked out with intelligent eyes
upon the world, has never ceased to ask it. In
the history of human thought, especially in its
higher levels, as in the Greek civilisation, the
best and ablest intellects of the race have been
turned towards its solution. The acquired results
of their labours have been happily handed down
to us in the great schools of Scholastic philosophy,
in which we have what has been aptly described
as **the main line of European thought."^ On
the great question just alluded to, there is nothing
in the ** by-path " philosophies which is ever
likely to invalidate their conclusions. The great
work of St Thomas and the Schoolmen was not
by any process of thought-spinning to originate
a new philosophy, but rather to gather up into a
formulated system all that was best and soundest
in the Greek and Arabian schools which inter-
preted the thought of the ancient civilisations.
Scholastic philosophy is thus much more a
channel than a source. We esteem it, not merely
because it is Thomistic or Scholastic, but because
the great natural verities which it presents to us
in terms of precision are the common property of

1 Professor Caldecott of King^s College, and H. R.
M'Intosh, M.A., Selections from the Literature of Theism^
p. ID.

PREFACE 5

mankind from the simple fact that they are the
thought-out conclusions from the common sense
of mankind, at work from the beginning upon
the great problems of our origin and destiny.
We prize it, because it comes as the heir of the
ages, and represents the acquired results of the
highest and clearest thinking in the life and
history of the race. Metaphysical research has
ever been its chief and absorbing aim, and its
soundness therein remains untouched by the fact
that in the physical domain, in which inductions
upon ever- widening areas of facts must necessarily
make their progressive report, many of its con-
clusions have been naturally long since evacuated.
For this reason, most of the arguments set forth
in the following pages have proceeded sub-
stantially on the traditional lines of the Scholastic
philosophy, and to it, rather than to the somewhat
free and feeble handling of those arguments by
the writer, is due whatever worth or cogency they
may be found to possess.

J. Moves.

Note, — The few questions that were put to the lecturer
on the occasion of the deUvery of the lecture at London,
Aberdeen, and Edinburgh have been dealt with in the text,
and consequently are not included in an appendix.

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/existenceofgodOOmoyerich

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

'' I CANNOT see God. But I see that He must
exist ; for if He did not, I could not see anything.
There would not be anything for me to see, and
I should not be here with eyes to see it." That
would represent roughly the argument which
arises in the mind of men as they gaze upon the
world around them. It is built upon a conviction
that the world and men have been made — that
they did not make themselves — and that they
have need of a God to have made them. But
why should there be any such need ? Why
should the universe need to have been made at
all ? Might it not have existed always and from
ever, with man (or his elements to be developed
later on) as a part of it ? Might it not exist of
itself by its own forces and laws, without need of
anything either to create or to sustain it ?

The answer to this question is to be found
in the proofs of the existence of God ; and a
statement of these, in very rough outline, is
attempted in the following pages.

7

8 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

The proofs of God s existence are various
and manifold. They are differently appreciated
by different people, according to their mental
taste or aptitude. A proof which is felt to be
all that is clear and conclusive to some, may seem
to be vague and unsatisfactory to others. For
that reason it is well to consider here a number
of proofs, leaving each mind to assimilate most
the one which most appeals to it. No doubt,
the considerations which make for the existence
of God are innumerable, but the main proofs as
traditionally handed down to us by those who
have thought much upon the subject are com-
paratively few.

I. — Argument from Motion.

The first is drawn from the fact of Motion.
Here we are at once face to face with a fact of
cosmic magnitude. There is nothing which
enters so much into the whole structure of the
universe and is found so much everywhere and
in everything, as Motion. On this point Science
bears eloquent witness. Nature is truly de-
scribed as an inexhaustible storehouse of
wonders. Science — which is but another word
for man discovering the laws and secrets of
Nature — stands with the telescope in one hand

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 9

and the microscope in the other. The one
turned upwards to scan the immeasurably great,
reveals to us worlds upon worlds executing their
marvellous dance in the realms of boundless
space, and moving with unthinkable speed along
paths so vast that their distance can only be
counted by the years which a ray of their light
would take to reach us. The other turned
downwards to scrutinise the immeasurably small,
reveals worlds within worlds of organic structures
living and moving within a compass so small that
thousands of them might be lost within the area
of a pin-head. But all of them, great and small,
from the remotest star to the tiniest microbe, are
in motion, and fulfilling their part in the universal
law of movement. Or, to look at the same truth
from another point of view, motion is of all things
in Nature the one which is most tellingly
brought home to our senses. For in- ^^!f??^^

^ ^ of Motion

stance, I raise my eyes to the sun
shining at noonday, and my sight is filled and
flooded with the dazzling brilliance of the sun-
light. Have I seen it ? Nothing so clearly.
Science tells me that the light which I have
seen is motion. I take my stand at the side
of a mighty piece of ordnance — the 100- ton gun
— while the shot is being fired, and my ears
are, as it were, riven with the deafening report

lO THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

which seemed to rip and rend the very atmos-
phere. Have I heard it ? Nothing so plainly.
Science tells me that the sound which I have
heard is motion. I draw near to a heated fur-
nace, and I put my hand into the flame until
the pain is maddening. Have I felt it ? Nothing
so keenly. Science tells me that the heat which
I felt is motion. Light, heat, sound, are but
terms of motion, and these are the most palpably
evident things in Nature.

So far, we are still in the outer and lower
court of the world's wonders. The crowning
phenomenon of the whole universe is Thought in
the mind of man. As a marvel and mystery of
power, both in the inscrutable subtlety of its process
and in the far-reaching sweep of its operation
and results, there is nothing in all the rest of the
universe which can be compared to it. The
wonders of the world outside of us are not nearly
so great as the wonder which is inside of us.
The works of Nature in the stars above us, and
in the earth beneath us, and in the air around us,
are immeasurably surpassed and transcended by
the work which is wrought within the mind of
every man whenever he uses his intelligence to
think, or to know, or understand. But this use
of the faculty means motion — not indeed in the
sense of local motion, but motion really and

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ii

essentially in the sense of the exercise of a function,
and the movement of powers into activity. From
the farthest planet to the inmost recesses of our
being, motion is everywhere.

What has our reason to say when it reads the
open page of Nature, and beholds the universe
vibrating and pulsating from end to end and
from age to age with this ubiquitous law of
motion ?

It says with all possible plainness that where
all is^in motion, there must be a Prime-mover.
That Prime-mover is what we call God.

The more we think of it the more we shall
realise the necessity of the Prime-mover. And
the more we shall feel that the absence of one is
unthinkable.^

We can see that motion by its very essence

must mean a procession or transition* It is not

merely dynamic. It may be from place to place,

or it may be from one state or condition to

another. But it is from somewhere to somewhere,

or from something to something. It is this

which is the very condition of all progress and

evolution. Nothing can ever move without

^ That the Prime-mover must itself be unmoved, is
obvious. If it were moved, it would postulate another
being to move it, and it would not be the Prime-mover.
An endless succession of movers and moved is unthinkable
as existing in reality.

12 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

moving in some direction. We may think of that
direction as a line, or we may think of it as a
succession of states. When we turn to find its
beginning, mentally, the line or succession might
be extended indefinitely backwards. But in the
real world there is no such thing as indefinite or
illimitable extension. Nothing can ever

Initial Point ^^^^P^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Constitution ; and

in all even as the part has its measure, so the

Succession ^j^qJ^ must have its measure, however

or Series

great it may be and beyond our reckon-
ing. Hence the line must have an initial point,
however far back we must go to find it. And
the evolution must have a primary stage, how-
ever remote in the world's history that stage
may be. In other words, there must have been
a point at which, or a source from which, the
world-motion was started, and there must there-
fore have been a Prime-mover to impart the
movement and to conduct its evolution.

This power which is behind all nature is God.
As Prime-mover, He is the source by which all
the manifold movement of nature is fed and
sustained — and, as the Unmoved, He is the
Constant which gives reason to all change, and
the Eternal which gives reason to all time and
succession. It is in Him that *'we live, and
move, and have our being."

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 13

1 1 . — A rgument from Causality,

A second proof is found in the nature of
Causation.

In the universe we have a vast multitude of
phenomena. It is quite clear that these are not
isolated from, or independent of, one another. On
the contrary, they are so connected that one
brings about another, or makes it to be. This
connection is called causation, and the thing
which makes something else to be is called a
cause, and the thing which is made to be is called
an effect. If we ask why should things
be thus connected, the answer is that Nature the
they are so because there exists an Basis of
underlying unity in the phenomena. ^"^ ^^
Just as in mathematics or geometry, the ex-
planation why one truth should be the reason
of another truth is to be found in the intrinsic
unity of all truth, so the explanation why one
thing in this world should cause another to be, is
a certain unity which binds together all nature.
Effects flow from causes, and conclusions flow
from principles or premisses, because each has
unity as a basis to go upon. We may also note
that there is not only unity, but — as we have
seen in the motion proof — there is direction.
Effects are found to proceed from causes, or con-

14 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

elusions from premisses, but not inversely ; the
causes do not come out of the effects, nor do the
premisses come out of the conclusion. That
means that in the unity there is order or proces-
sion, whether in things logical or ontological.
Moreover, this order or procession is real ;
that is to say, it is due not merely to our minds
or to any mental categories, but it exists in the
nature of truth, and is the nature of the universe.
A given degree of heat causes a rock to melt.
Here is cause and effect, and with them there is
also a fixed order or direction. It is the heat
which causes the melting, and not the melting
which causes the heat. Both the connection and
the order or direction are real. The heat would
have melted the rocks — in point of fact, it did so
— even if no man were on the face of the earth to
witness it, or no human mind were there to know
it. Hence the relation between the
an heat and the melting could not be
Inadequate adequately expressed as mere sequence.

Explanation y^ u i <ui, *.

For sequence would only mean that
the one followed the other, and one might argue
that the following was merely a matter of
then and after, or a matter of time, and conse-
quently something subjective or depending on the
standpoint of the observer. The relation, based
as it is on the real unity of nature, is obviously

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 15

real ; and the one really and naturally not only
precedes the other, but brings about the other,
and would do so if no human mind had ever
existed. We may see this more clearly in a rather
crude example. An express train has passed me
at full speed, and I ask myself why do the
carriages move along the line. Evidently the
movement of the carriages is due to the movement
of the locomotive, which in turn is due to the
pressure of the steam, and so on, till we might
pass along a line of ulterior causes. But if any-
one told me that the explanation was to be found
in sequence, it is clear that his explanation would
not explain. For sequence means ** following " ;
and to tell me that the carriages moved along the
line because they followed the engine, or because
the moving of the engine first takes place, and
the movement of the carriages afterwards, is to
tell me nothing, seeing that it is why they move
or followed the engine is just what I want to know.
If, on the other hand, my attention is drawn to
the couplings, and I am shown that the cohesion
is such that the movement of the engine causes a
conveyance of energy and the movement of
the carriages, I am at once put upon the true
line of the solution. But the couplings and
cohesion are real, and not subjective, and the
relation between the movement of the engine and

i6 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

that of the carriages is effective ; or in other words
it is not mere sequence, but causation based upoi
an actual transference of energy or force.

It is exactly this real connection of phenomen^
which forms the foundation of all scientific kno\
ledge and achievement. True Science is essentiallj|
the knowledge of things through their causes
Any one standing by a water-mill may observ^
the fact that the wheel turns round, and the fac
that the water falls upon the wheel, and the fac
that the water flows through the mill-race. Eves
a brute might see or observe such facts. But the
man, and especially the man of science, by the
law of his reason goes farther, and asks the reason
why. He sees the cause of the rotation of the
wheel in the weight-pressure of the flowing and
falling water, and the cause of the flow and fall of
the water in the law of gravity, and its liquid
nature, and he will pursue his research of causes
if need be into its chemical composition. But
throughout he is building on the principle of
causation and the real connection of cause and
effect, and every induction which he makes from
his observed facts assumes the unity or uni-
^. .. formity of nature by which the same

Direction ^ ^ ^

as well as causes in the same circumstances will

^^^ produce the same effects. We may

note that the mere unity of nature in itself is not

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 17

enough for his purpose. He must count upon a
certain fixed order or direction existing in the
phenomena, by which some produce others and
are not produced by them. Without this prin-
ciple of real connection and direction which we
call causation, the whole work of science would
come to a standstill, and all its achievements in
the past would be reduced to guess-work. If
causation be the explanatory principle of Nature,
it must also be the effective principle of Nature ;
for the way in which things are known must ever
at root be the way in which things themselves are
made or done. The mind understands a thing in
its cause because in the cause it, so to speak, wit-
nesses the doing or the making of it. The logical
and the ontological are but two ways of walking
the same road, although the doing begins from
one end and the knowing begins from the other,
as the cause acts downwards to effect, while the
mind investigates upwards from the effect to the
cause. This very connection of phenomena which
we have termed direction — the procession of effect
from cause — is in itself a finger-post embedded in
the very nature of things, pointing back to the
source from which all things have proceeded.
And here we reach the gist of our argument.

If the universe lies before us as a vast multi-
tude of phenomena — if this multitude be not a

B

i8 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

I

chaos, but a world held together by a marvellous _
law of unity, and at the same time marked by a |
not less marvellous law of direction or procession,
as seen in the uniform but manifold concatena-
tion of causes and effects (the origin no doubt of
variety) ; — if we have as a result all that splendour
of order which means classification in place and
evolution in time, then at the root of all this unity
and causation there must be One Cause, in which
the unity finds its source, and from which the
causation derives its original impulse and energy.
That is only to say that when we have in the
universe a vast chain of causes and effects, and
when we travel up from cause to cause, and then
again to an ulterior cause, the series existing as it
does in reality cannot be indefinite, and we must
eventually reach the First Cause, which is God.
In doing so our minds are only logically or by
knowledge travelling up the chain by which the
Final Cause ontologically or by creation, so to
speak, worked down. However long the chain,
there must be an initial link, and above all there
must be a Linker ; or the chain had never been
woven, nor its links put together in the admirable
order in which we find them.

We have seen that the connection between
phenomena is effective. It is not merely that one
succeeds the other, but the one brings about the

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 19

other. That means that there must be a trans-
ference of energy, or a transformation, or at least
a transition of energy, in the succession. Some-
thing must pass from one to another or from one
in the other, or there would be no trans in the
matter. Hence causation is necessarily a giving,
and a cause is essentially a giver ; and an effect is
what is, and has what it has, just because it has
received it from the cause. The molten rock
equals all that caused the composition of the rock
plus the heat which melted it. Hence
the old scholastic axiom, which says 9^"^ation

/IS giving

that there is nothing in an effect which
first of all did not exist (and in a higher manner)
in its cause. That is only another way of
saying that no one can give what it has not.
If, then, the principle of causation teaches us
that there is a First Cause from which pro-
ceeded all the effects which we see in the uni-
verse, and which is simply a series of givings,
it teaches us also that there can be found in the
universe nothing of being, viz., nothing real or
good, which is not to be found first of all and
most of all in the First Cause from which all
originated. Hence if we find here amongst us such
things as goodness, life, love, intelligence, the
First Cause must be one which has all these
attributes, and in the highest way, and is there-

20 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

fore not only God, but a good, living, loving,
intelligent, and therefore a Personal God. If our
seeing, hearing, and understanding have come
from Him, He must be one who Himself can see,
hear, and understand.^ That is an argument
which appealed to man long before the Scholastics.
*' He that planteth the ear, shall He not hear ; and
He that formed the eye, doth He not consider?
He that chastiseth the nations, shall He not rebuke ;
He that teacheth men knowledge ?" (Ps. xciii.).

III. — A rgument from Necessity.

Another proof is found in the nature of the
world's existence. We feel there is wide differ-
ence between the ways in which things are felt to

1 It would be superficial to discount the force of such an
argument on the plea of its being anthropomorphism. As
long as being comes down from cause to effect, it must be
reasonable and logical to argue upwards from effect to cause,
and to attribute eminentcr to the cause whatever there is of
the nature of being in the effect. That is only to assert the
unity of Nature and the necessary harmony of the logical
with the ontological, or knowledge with the nature of
things. There is therefore so far a true anthropomorphism
which attributes to God all, in the highest way, which is
good in man. Anthropomorphism becomes false only when
it departs from this law, and attributes to God not being, or
what is good and positive, but the limitations, the falling
short, or negation of being, which is evil or imperfection
as found in man.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 21

be true. For instance, it is true that two and
two make four, and that the angles of a triangle
equal two right angles. These statements are so
true, that we know and feel that they never could
have been otherwise. They are eter-

]Nf6C6ssd.rv

nally and immutably and universally ^nd
true, and a time, place, or condition in Contingent
which they would not be true is utterly
unthinkable. Because they are not only true,
but must be true, they are called necessary truths.
But there are other statements which as a matter
of fact are true, but which we feel might have
happened to be otherwise. For instance, it is
true that you are reading this page at the present
moment ; but it might have easily happened that
this page had never been written, or that you had
never consented to read it. It is true that London
is built on the Thames ; but it is true not neces-
sarily, but just because, as a fact, it happens to be
so ; because London might have been built else-
where, or might never have been built at all.
When things are true, not because they must be
so, and cannot be otherwise, but because as a
matter of fact they happen to be true, they are
called happenings, or contingent truths. The
distinction is a very plain one, and one which
cornes home to the common sense of every reason-
ing mind. We are all familiar with it, when we

te THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

draw the distinction between principles and
facts.

We apply it to the world around us, and ask
ourselves to which class of truths does the
universe belong? Clearly, it belongs to the
happening or contingent class. No one feels for
a moment that the statement that the universe
exists, is on a par with the statement that two
and two make four. The first is quite true, but
it might have been otherwise. The second is
necessary, and anything else would be impossible.
Or, if we wish to push the inquiry farther, we
may once more call to mind that law by which
nothing can ever rise above its own composition
and constitution. Every part, and every group
of parts of the universe which we see is manifestly
contingent. There is nothing in physical nature
which might not have been, and the laws of
Nature although de facto determined, fixed, and
uniform, are not immutable like mathematical
truths, in the sense that it would be impos-
sible or unthinkable that they should ever have
been otherwise. If the parts of the universe be
thus contingent, it is clear that the whole must be
likewise contingent, for there can be nothing in a
whole which is not derived from the parts which
constitute it. But once we know that the
universe is contingent, we are in face of two

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 23

alternatives. Either the universe was made by
someone — or, the universe always existed of
itself. Now if we examine the second, we find
that it will not hold good. That a necessary
being should exist of itself and from all time, is
intelligible. But that a contingent being — as
we have seen the universe must be — should so
exist, is incredible. In the first place, a being
which existed of itself could not help itself from
existing (since, to prevent itself from existing, it
would have to exist before it existed — which
would be absurd). If it cannot help itself from
existing, and there is nothing else to help it,
it would be a necessary being, and not a con-
tingent being, for its non-existence would be an
impossibility. In the second place, if a universe
existed from all time, and were still contingent,
we should have to believe that its existence was
really nothing more than a mere happening or
accident. In that case we should either have to
seek something outside^ of the universe, which
determined the happening in favour of existence
rather than the reverse, or we should have to
leave the happening without any determining
cause at all, either in itself or elsewhere. But
that would be literally to ascribe the existence of

^ If its existence were determined from within, it would
be self-existent and necessary.

24 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

the whole universe to chance. Such a conclusion
, would be all that is unreasonable and unscientific.
Reason asks the why of all existence, and
tells us that the determinant of existence must
be either inside the being which exists — in which
case it is self-existent and necessary, and not
contingent — or it is outside of it, in which case
it is contingent and not self-existent or necessary.
But to believe in existence without a determi-
nant either within or without would be to refer the
maximum of being to no reason whatever, and
to land ourselves in the lowest depth of supersti-
tion ; for superstition exactly consists in ascribing
effects to non-existent causes ; and the greater the
effect so ascribed, the greater the superstition.
True Science asks the causes of things, and takes
as its ruling principle that nothing happens by
chance. If it be unscientific to refer even the
least part of the universe to chance, how much
more unscientific would it be to refer the whole ?

Throughout this argument we have been
relying upon a fact of rational experience, namely,
the distinct apprehension of necessary as con-
trasted with contingent truth. The verdict of
our reason is that the one is not the other, and
that the one must be, and cannot but be, while
the other only is or may be, and might not be.
There is the whole class of mathematical and

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 25

geometrical truths belonging to the one and the

whole class of physical and historical truths

belonging to the other. If the distinction could

be shown not to exist in the nature of things

(based on the root-difference between identity

of being and mere fact, viz., between essence

and action), but to be due merely to ^

^ ' Causation

mental category, or a groove of the not a

mind which apprehends, and not to Cental

Category
anything in the truths apprehended,

the argument would indeed be subverted. But
in that case we should have to face the conse-
quences. One of the plainest facts of mental
experience — the sense of a necessary truth as
different from a contingent one — would have
been proved to be illusory and misleading. Our
reason, in telling us that a whole set of truths is
of a kind which must be, would have utterly
deceived us, and in telling us that their contra-
dictories were impossible, would have equally
misled us. Our perception of the principle of
identity would have been a mental illusion. If
this were the case, it is difficult to see how we
could ever afterwards trust to the report of
experience or to the dictate of reason. All
physical science is built on experience, and all
mathematical science on reason, and precisely on
reason perceiving this very principle of identity.

26 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

If, then, the distinction which is the foundation
of the argument were impugned, we could only
feel that all modern science was based upon
false and unreliable foundations.^

I may sum up the statement of this argu-
ment by saying that our reason, by refusing to
confuse the things which it feels must be with
those which are but might not be, has a sense of
necessity. It thus enables us by demarcation to
perceive the quality of contingency, or non-aseity
— in other words, of createdness — which attaches
to the universe, whether in its constituent parts
or in its constituted whole. As such a universe
must have for its existence a determinant which

^ We cannot explain away the sense of necessary truth
by holding the theory that it is merely due to an inherited
tendency to conclude that what we have always seen to be
must always have been ; — in other words, that our remote
ancestors found by experience, so much and so often, that
two and two made four, that their descendants gradually
lost the power of perceiving that it could be otherwise,
and thus acquired an inherited sense of necessity. Man
from the beginning has been face to face to nature, and with
a multitude of physical facts which have entered quite as
constantly into his experience. He saw the grass grow,
and the rivers flow, and the sun rise and set morning and
evening, and presumably before he had learned to count
that two and two made four. Yet, after thousands of
years in perceiving these physical facts, we are not conscious
of any sense of necessity as we undoubtedly are in dealing
with necessary truths.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 27

is not of itself, there must exist outside ^ of it a
Being self-existent and necessary upon which it
depends. This Being we call God, '* uphold-
ing all things by the word of His power."
(Heb. i. 3).

IV. — Argument from Perfection. '

Another argument for the existence of God
is based on the varying degrees of perfection in
which things are found to consist.. The world
is not only marvellously complex, but the things
in it differ from one another by being some higher
and better than others. A plant is higher than
a stone, a brute is higher than a plant,
and man is higher than the brute. Moreover,
qualities of strength, beauty, worth, are possessed
by some in a higher measure as by others in a

1 We say '' outside " of it in the sense of being immeasur-
ably distinct from it. The distance between God and His
creation is not spatial but ontological. A concept of God
in His heaven or away above the stars, is simply a very
natural way of representing the transcendentalism of the
Necessary Being. It has its due correction in the doctrine
of His omnipresence. Some who lay stress upon His
immanence, represent Him as the ''groundwork" upon
which all phenomena are projected. But obviously the
concept of God as a groundwork is, if anything, more crude
than that of a God beyond the stars. And a spatial God
would be even more unthinkable than a sidereal one,

28 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

lower, and things present themselves in a scale
of innumerable degrees of perfection. Thus all
over the face of nature is written conspicuously
the distinction of higher and lower and more
and less. But, as higher and lower and more
or less are plainly relative, there must in the
nature of things be somewhere a standard in
relation to which they become higher or better
as they approximate, and lower or less as they
become remote. For a relative without an
absolute is unthinkable. The standard might
indeed de facto be something having the highest
degree of perfection actually acquired. As such,
it would be only contingently absolute ; but the
real absolute would require to be one outside of
which there could be no higher degree of perfec-
tion possible, otherwise it itself would be relative
and not absolute,.. Hence the more-or-less-ness
which we see in nature is in its measure an
indication of the absolute perfection which is
but another name for God, of whom all relative
perfection in nature is but the fragmentary shadow,
measuring its greatness or goodness by its
approach to Him.

We may here note that certain writers of the
Positivist school have insisted very much on the
relativity of all knowledge. They regard all
phenomena as so many symbols rather than

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 29

realities ; and as the phenomena of the universe
are innumerable and complex beyond all calcula-
tion, they argue that any conclusions or inductions
founded upon any given set falling under our
experience can never possess any absolute
certainty, and can never be said to be true except
in a sense which is not real but merely relative.

But if the contention were true, the real
sufferers would not be the theists, but the
scientists. It would mean that the xheReia-
whole work of science was based on tivityof
unreality ; that its acquired results ^^^"^"^^"^
were after all not acquired, but liable to be
annulled at any time by a change of the rela-
tivity ; and that men of scientific research were
at best playing a game of counters, of which
they themselves cannot even know the value.
If that were the case, students of science might
well have some reason for discouragement. On
the other hand, the theist would feel that the
more any one insisted that phenomena were
mere symbols, and that the whole universe was
a vast complexus of relativity, the more imperative
would be the need of believing in an ^absolute.
For relations do not hang in the air, and re-
lativity without an absolute is inconceivable.
The Absolute, which includes the reason of all
reality, would be transcendental, and nothing

30 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

else than the God for whose existence the theist
is contending ; and the more a Positivist insists
on the relativity of knowledge and phenomena,
the more, in fact, he is found to insist on the
ultimate truth of God's existence.

V. — Argimient of Design, - A^-^^^^

A well-known proof for the existence of God
is found in/ the fact of all nature bearing the
impress of design, and this proof when carefully
considered is felt to be more profound than at
first sight it might seem to be.

It is undeniable that in nature we find the
twofold feature — symmetry and construction.
In plants and in crystals are to be found
geometrical forms of marvellous symmetry.
But much more wonderful is the fact that in
nature there is not only structure, but construc-
tion, viz., the adjustment of part to part with a
view to the fulfilling of a given purpose. No
machine which has issued from the inventive
genius of man — the printing-press, the telegraph,
the phonograph — can compare in mechanical
adaptation to the solar system, or the organism
of a plant or an insect. Man's machines are
cumbrous at the best, as they are fitted together
from the outside. Nature's machines are ex-

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 31

quisite, because they are fitted together from the
inside and by the forces which permeate them.
How far do such facts as symmetry or adaptation
of parts imply the action of an intelligent cause ?
y The mere fact of symmetrical forms in nature
might be traced to the uniform action of certain
forces. And even adaptation of part to part
might within certain limits be explained
by the tendency of matter to adapt Adapution
itself to the action of forces which
shape it in the way best suited to the flow
of their energy^. If I see a round stick fitted
exactly into a'^ round hole in a hard substance,
I may say that some intelligent artisan must
have made the one to suit the other. But if
a piece of wood were pressed by some con-
tinuous force against the round hole for a
sufficiently long time, the mere pressure would
make the stick to fit the hole, and we should
have a case, not of design, but of force-adaptation.
Why the matter of the wood suited the shaping
pressure of the force, and why the wood and the
force were there at all, working together, would
still remain to be explained. If the result were
not a mere round stick fitted to a round hole,
but a wonderful and complex organism functioning
by a co-ordination of manifold parts for a definite
purpose, we should feel that the fact of mere

32 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

force-adaptation would not go very far to account
for the construction. Force is one thing, but the
purpose or purposive action which characterises
force is another. It is the latter which is so
plain in nature, and which cries out for an
explanation. Herein is the ulterior strength of
Example ^^^ Argument of Design. I see a
of Design— heron wading in the shallows, fishing

Arg^ument f^^ j^.^ p^.^^^ j^^ j ^^i-^h it at its WOrk,

I may observe that it presents all the evidences
of having been designed by an intelligent
Creator. There is the long beak, so admirably
fitted to reach down far into the water for the
food ;it seeks ; the supple neck, which allows it
to deliver the stroke with unerring precision ;
the long legs, enabling it to wade far out into the
water where its food may be found. I might
conclude that surely an intelligent Creator had
given it such a beak, neck, and legs, precisely
with the design that it should be able to live and
to find its sustenance. But here I may stand
corrected. A naturalist may point out to me
that the bird has a history, and that it was not
always shaped as I now see it. He
Evolutionist ^ proceed to tell me what he believes

Explanation ^ ^

to be the tale of its evolution. It was
once very much like other birds. To begin with,
its material organism was more or less plastic.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 33

and likely to be shaped by internal and external
conditions. Then energy flows more fully into
a member the more it is used, and the member
is thus developed in size and strength. The
bird, obliged to use its legs in walking and
wading after its prey, and its beak in seizing
it, gradually strengthened these members rather
than others. Moreover, it would, by the law
of heredity, transmit these characteristics to its
offspring. The farther it would have to wade
out into the water for a supply of food, the
better chance its long legs and strong beak
would give it of finding what it wanted. Those
of its offspring which had the longest legs and
strongest beaks would have more plentiful food,
and would be the more likely to survive, to be
strong and vigorous, and to have numerous pro-
geny. Those which had not these advantages
would be handicapped in the struggle for exist-
ence, and would become weak, would die out,
and fail to have offspring. Thus by the mere
self-shaping process of energy moulding the
organism from within, and environment mould-
ing it from without, and weeding out the unfitted,
we may come to have the heron very much as
we now find it. All that is but a very crude out-
line of the working of a theory with which we
all are familiar.

f UNIVERSITY I

V OF >/

34 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Let us, then, for the moment accept the theory,
and examine the process. There is at the very
beginning a law of nutrition or self-
Explanation preservation, by which the animal
Enforces seeks to sustain the life within it by
Argument ^^^ quest of food which is outside of
it. That is law number one. Then
there is the law of plasticity of organism, by
which its members can be moulded more or less
by inward forces or outward environment. That
is law number two. There is the law of invigora-
tion, which sends most of the vital energy into a
member that is most used, and least into that
which is least used, so that the one becomes
strengthened and developed, while the other
becomes weakened or atrophied. That is law
number three. There is the law of heredity,
which transmits to the offspring even in a
pronounced degree the character thus given to
the organism of the parents. That is law number
four. There is the law of survival of the fittest,
which enables those who are adapted to the food-
finding and environment to live and thrive and
multiply, and weeds out and cuts off the succes-
sion of those who are not. That is law number
five. We have thus five laws, each with its own
specific drift and operation ; laws which we may
roughly name food-quest, member - moulding.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 35

energy-flow, heredity, and elimination of the
weakest. And these five laws are not at all
separate, isolated, or independent. On the contrary,
they are adjusted so as to fit into one another,
all moving together by a marvellous interadapta-
tion and interaction to achieve one definite pur-
pose— the production of a well-developed heron.
Now that in itself — this mechanism of

jV/r Ck r* n 3 n 1 ^m

laws — is a combination far more won- ©f Parts
derful, more eloquent in its need of a and
constructive intelligence, than any ^^^l^^^"*
machine which has ever come under
our observation. If I had under my hands a
machine consisting of five main parts, which when
put together worked harmoniously to effect a
given object, I might admire indeed the skill of
the inventor. But if I have before my eyes a
construction in which it is no longer five dead
parts, but five active laws of nature that are
so deftly handled, interwoven, and combined,
that by their interplay they are perpetually
turning out a multitude of living types, with
the ages for their working-day and the uni-
verse for their workshop, I may justly feel
that here indeed is Design in the most telling
and sublime sense of the word. Any mere
adjustment of parts can never equal in ingenuity
and skill that adjustment of laws which must

36 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

ever be a higher and subtler form of mechanism.
If an ordinary machine requires an intelligent
constructor to adapt its parts and fit them
together, how much more this higher mechanism
of laws cries out for the need of an intelligent
Maker to set them in motion, to combine their
action, to direct their operation to the definite
purpose for which we see them so wonderfully
working. The earthly mechanic plods with his
material, which he shapes in such a way that the
laws of nature may help him to achieve his object.
The laws themselves are beyond his control, and
he can only apply them. But the Mechanic who
can handle the laws themselves and fit them to
work together, even as the earthly mechanic fits
his wheels and levers, must transcend in power
and intelligence all human genius.
X The argument of Design is not impaired, but
rather strengthened and enhanced, by all that the
naturalist can tell us of evolution. It means that
the universe is a vast and complex mechanism,
and that, not only for the marvellous adjustment
of its parts, but above all, for the still more
marvellous adjustment of its laws, it requires
an Intelligent Adjuster.

Ad'ustment '^^^ need is one which we may see

and Pre- more clearly when we reflect on the

conception connection that exists between con-

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 37

struction and preconception. For things have to
exist mentally before they exist really, whenever
they have to be put into any kind of order.

Let us suppose that we have before us a
mechanism of a given number of pieces. It is
clear that we have not merely these pieces, but a
special quality attaching to each, by which they
fit into one another in order to work for a definite
object. It is equally clear that the pieces have
received this quality, their special make and shape,
in view of the object to be attained. That implies
that they must have been seen and adjusted
before they were actually made, else there is no
guiding principle on which the adjustment could
have been directed. The only medium in which
things can be seen or shaped before they come
into real existence, is an intelligent mind. It
alone can foresee the object and mentally picture
the pieces and their adjustment, and thus give to
them the shape which is required for the purpose
in view.

If it were otherwise, we should have to
suppose that the pieces shaped themselves by
some blind and unconscious tendency inherent in
themselves ; and what is stranger still, that while
the tendency was thus blind and unconscious, and
able neither to see nor know what it was aiming
at, it achieved its purpose with unerring precision

38 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

and unrivalled success. Such a reason would be

worse than none. We feel that such a belief

would be degrading, for it attributes all that is

highest and best in the universe to a cause which

is blind and ignorant.^ It would be futile to veil

the real meaning of the belief by using such terms

as *' Nature" or '* Laws of Nature," as if these

were personifications. Nature in so far as it acts,

means certain forces, and laws of nature mean

nothing more than the uniform mode in which the

forces act. While these forces are non-intelligent

they can neither see, nor know, nor understand,

and therefore no amount of rhetoric would ever

conceal the poverty and hopeless inadequacy of

the position by which a blind and ignorant force

is made to stand as the reason of the construction

of plants and of planets, and of achievements in

ingenuity and contriving skill immeasurably

transcending all the wisdom and most brilliant

genius of mankind. To say that a magnificent

mechanism like the universe had no other author

than an unconscious force, is not to give to a

reason, but rather in despite of all reason, to

impute wonders of foresight to that which sees

^ To say that intelligence was latent in the original
forces, and afterwards developed, would not in the least help
in the solution. For it was not the developed intelligence
as we see it in man that shaped the universe, and the intelli-
gence in its latent forces could not see or understand.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 39

not, and wonders of contrivance to that which
knows not. To accept such a contradiction
requires more credulity than most men are found
to possess. As an explanation of the universe, it
not only fails to explain, but gives us instead a
genesis of the greater out of the less, and of things
out of their contradictories, which is in itself
something far more difficult than the original
problem. As a creed, it seems to be in reality
something harder to believe than any of the
dogmas of revealed religion.

As we cannot accept this blindfolded know-
nothing wonder-worker called Force as the
contriver of the glorious mechanism of the
universe, we conclude that just because it is a
mechanism it must have had an intelligent
Maker. For construction and adjustment of
parts by their nature imply preconception in
a thinking mind, and preconception implies
intelligence.

To construct something is something more
than to know something. If it is certain that
it requires intelligence, and a high degree of it, to
know the solar system, or the organism of a plant
or an insect, much more must intelligence have
been needed to produce it and to give know-
ledge so much to work upon. What mind
alone can study, mind alone can have

40 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

constructed to be studied. Men of science,
astronomers and physicists, by the very measure
of their genius, which we gratefully admire, are
themselves the best refutation of the conclusions
of some amongst their number, who ascribe the
existence of the world to a cause immeasurably
less intelligent than themselves. Hence we have
to choose between belief in an Intelligent Creator
— the most simple and rational solution, and the
one most in harmony with the workings of our
own intelligent nature — or to descend to the
bathos of putting at the origin and in supreme
control of all things a force which can neither see,
nor hear, or understand — an alternative which, as
we have said, seems to us the apotheosis of
blindness and ignorance./ That which is at the
beginning of all things, and which contains the
reason of all things, is God, by whatever name we
may choose to call it. If we are to have a God
— and by the force of the definition we must have
one — it is neither good nor reasonable, nor in
keeping with our nature or with His handiwork,
that we should have a blind one.

VL — Argument from Law or Conscience.

The argument which is sought in the nature
of Law, in the deeper sense of the word, may be

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 41

stated as follows. Our reason tells us that certain
things are true or false. Our conscience — which
is our reason in a certain aspect — tells us that
certain things are right or wrong. Moreover we
feel that this distinction is not arbitrary or
conventional, but is rooted in the nature of things,
and is therefore a law in the fundamental sense of
the term. We know, for instance, not only that
it is true that two and two make four, but that it
is true in all times, in all conditions, and in all
places, just as the statement that two and two
make five would be false in the same manner.
There is thus a law of truth as against falsehood,
which is universal and everlasting. It is likewise
immutable, and absolutely independent of man s
consent. If all the nations of the world agreed
to-morrow in a resolution by unanimous consent
that in future two and two should make five, or
anything else than four, we know that two and
two would continue to make four just as it did
from all time, and as it will do for all eternity.
In like manner, there is a law of right as against
wrong, which in its ultimate principle is immutable,
eternal, and independent of human consent. An
ethical flaw, like a mathematical one, is a violation
of a principle which is in the nature of things above
and beyond all human control or adaptation. If,
then, there is thus written in our rational nature

42 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

y a law of Truth and Falsehood, and a law of

Right and Wrong — laws which are not of our

The Law ^^^^ing — there must be a Lawgiver

and the who made them, and the Lawgiver

awgiver j^^^^ j^^ |jj^g j^jg j^^^^ necessary,

eternal, and immutable. /For law, above all things
— even in its political sense, but much more in
its natural sense — is the highest expression of
order and purpose, and therefore of intelligence.
/ There can be no law without a Lawgiver, and
the Lawgiver must Himself be intelligent, if
His law appeals to our intelligence.

It is sometimes said that our conscience is
the revealer of God, and that it is God's voice
-r^i. T^- . . within us. That is true in the sense

The Dictate

of that conscience is the name which we
Conscience ^^j^g ^^ q^j. reason when applied to

nota ^ r . 1 1 ic

Revealer matters of right and wrong (for con-
^"^a science is not a distinct faculty from

Resultant of i . n in*

Perception ^^^ intellect, and all its perceptions, in
of God's so far as it perceives at all, cannot be
xis enc Q^i^gj. ^j^^j^ intellectual), and in so far
as it is the voice of our reasonable nature which
God has given us, it is the voice of God. But
it is strictly the revealer, not directly of God,
but of the ** ought," or the duties which we owe
to God. Naturally there would be no ''ought'*
or duty at all, unless there was a righteous-

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 43

ness or God at the end of it. But the per-
ception of righteousness — or of God, who is
concrete righteousness — is the work of reason ;
and when reason sees it, and, consequently, the
practical *' ought" or ** ought not" which arises
therefrom, we call it conscience. God or
righteousness in some shape has first of all to
be reached by reason before reason, which we call
conscience, can dictate its practical judgement.
Conscience thus postulates God or goodness
rather than reveals them. Hence the revealer of
God in the natural order is the light of reason, as
the Vatican Council most opportunely declared.
Reason may apprehend the existence of God in
two ways — either by looking back to Him as the
First Cause, or looking forward to Him as the
Last End. The one tells us that we were made
by Him, the other tells that us we were made
for Him. It is out of this second or final percep-
tion— viz., that we are made for goodness, or for
God as our End — that comes the judgement of
reason of what is or is not in harmony with our
reaching it — God's pleasure or displeasure as we
call it — and the sense of sin or justice with the
practical ''ought" or dictate which we name
conscience.

The distinction has its importance in the fact
that the practical judgement of conscience takes

44 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

its direction from a speculative judgement of reason
which precedes it. And because reason, while
infallible in its first principles, is not so in its
deductions, we have the case of what is known
as false conscience. A man may be heard to
say that he cannot conscientiously believe in
transubstantiation. But it is not in the least
his conscience which judges of the doctrine. His
conscience cannot tell him whether transub-
stantiation is true, any more than it can tell him
whether Free Trade or Protection is the better
policy. He exercises on that matter his individual
reason — his private judgement — to see whether it
is true or not, and his reason in formulating
conclusions has to depend on the apprehension
of facts, which may or may not be adequate, and
as a result he may or may not arrive at an
accurate decision. Having arrived at the con-
clusion that transubstantiation is not true, his
conscience proceeds to make its practical dictate,
namely, that he ought not to believe or profess a
doctrine which he judges to be untrue. This
latter part is alone the voice of conscience, and
that voice remains always true and must always
be followed. But the conclusion to which he
applies it, namely, that the doctrine of tran-
substantiation is untrue, is not at all the voice
of conscience, but that of his own fallible

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 45

private judgement. The sense of right and
wrong — of the duty of doing what God wills,
or what is Godward or right, and of avoiding
what God forbids, or what is ungodward or
wrong, is not so much the cause as the resultant,
and not so much the premiss as the conclusion of
the reason perceiving that God is, and that certain
actions make for or make against Him. The
light of reason, in its true domain and in its
primary principles, whether turned backward to
God as our First Beginning in the revelation of
our origin, or forward to God as our Last End
in the revelation of our duty, remains the true
Schekinah of the presence of God — the Alpha
and Omega within us.

VII, — Ontological Argument,

The ontological proofs for the existence of
God are generally felt to be somewhat abstruse
and profound, but by the minds to which they
appeal — Hegel's amongst others — they have been
found in the long-run to be the most convincing
and the most satisfactory. The one which I
indicate here is not the well-known argument of
St Anselm, but rather a line of thought which
may serve at least to make more clear the unity
and necessity of transcendental being, and of

46 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

the logical connection which exists between the
concept of being and the attributes of God.

We have already seen in dealing with the
proof which is drawn from perfection, that our
reason recognises a clear distinction between neces-
sary and contingent truths — for instance, between
such a truth as two and two makinof four, and
the truth that William of Normandy invaded
this country. The one is and must be, and could
not be otherwise. The other is and may be, but
might have been otherwise./ With this
The Idea distinction before us, we turn our minds

01 seing^

to what we feel to be the most funda-
mental of all concepts — that of being. Because
it is the bed-rock of thought, we cannot define
it, and can only explain it by saying that Being
is that which is. Its opposite is the Nothing or
nihihim, that which is not.^

If we reflect upon the meaning of these two
terms, we shall feel that the Nothing or the
nihilum could not exist. It would contradict
itself if it did. A state of absolute nothingness
is impossible. As it has been truly said, if
nothingness had existed even for an instant,
nothing could ever have existed afterwards. If,
then, the nothing never could have existed, there
must be something which always existed. And this
something, whatever it may be, must always have

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 47

been, or else the nothing would have been, which
is impossible. Hence there is a sense in which
being is necessary ; for to say that something
must be, or cannot but have been, is to say in
other words that it is a necessary being.

Here we have to guard against any mere
play upon words. It might be said that what
we have found by our reflection is the truth, that
something or other must always have been, but
not that the being itself is a 'necessary one ; or,
to put it otherwise, it is the truth that is neces-
sary, not the being.

But if we reflect still further we shall find
that after all the one implies the other.

For we know that since nothingness never
could have been, something (we do not say what)
always must have been in existence. If that
something had the reason of its existence in
itself — in other words, if it were self-existent — it
would certainly be a necessary being, for by its very
condition, its essence and existence would be the
same, and it could not help existing. On the other
hand, if the something which always existed had
not the reason of its existence in itself, it must have
had it in something else which had. Then this
something else would be the self-existent and
necessary being. Thus in any case, if the
nothingness be excluded, as it must be, we can-

48 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

not escape from the admission of a necessary
being.

Here it might be said that the necessary
being which we have found is nothing

Analysis of i i • • 11

Attributes ^^^^ ^han bemg m general, or let us
say, to put it concretely, the Universe.
Whether that is so or not, we may try to find
out by an analysis.

Let us call the being which we have been
considering X. It includes simply that being
which is necessitated by the inevitable exclusion
of the nothingness.

1. We have seen that X must be, or the
nothingness would be, and therefore X is a
necessary being.

2. But as the nothingness not only cannot be,
but never could have been, and never can be,
it is clear that X not only must be, but must
always have been, and must always be. X
therefore is a being which has no beginning, and
no end — which ever was, is, and ever shall be.
In other words, it is eternal.

3. As the very meaning of X is that it is
being which is logically forced upon us by the
fact that nothingness could not exist, and as it
is thus logically born by the exclusion of nothing-
ness, it follows that it must contain all that is
outside of nothingness, and that nothingness is

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 49

the only limit of its being. That is only to say
that it contains the fulness of being, that its
being is limitless, or Infinite. Since outside of it
nothing can ever be, it contains the **all that is
or ever can be," which is exactly the definition of
the Infinite being.

4. As X is infinite, it is evidently one. By
its very meaning, outside of it is nothingness, and
therefore no other necessary being but it can
exist. It has that outside oneness which means
no other than one, or extrinsic unity.

5. As X is infinite, it is also simple or devoid
of parts ; that is, it has also inside oneness, or
intrinsic unity. If X were composite, and so had
parts, the parts would by the very fact have a
number, and that number, at least in thought,
could be added to. A greater than X could
therefore be conceived and therefore possible, and
X would not be infinite, and it would not be, as
we have seen, the being ** outside of which
nothing can be." X is, therefore, simple by the
fact of being infinite.

6. We have already seen that X is eternal ;
that as a being which must be, it must always
have been, is, and must always be. Its duration
is Infinite or eternal. There is no conceivable
instant in which it was not (or in that time the
nothingness would have been). But infinite or

D

so THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

eternal duration has no parts. If it had any-
such parts, their number could be added to, and
it could be conceived as greater than it is.
Hence X's existence is not one of successive
time, but of eternity. As a necessary and
eternal being it has not to wait until to-morrow
for a part of its existence. Its being is the eternal
now, without instants of succession in the past
or future. Hence X is immutable, for change
implies time, or succession of states or instants,
since not even a Necessary and Infinite being
can be and not be something at the same
time.

Thus, from the concept of being, and by
the contrast and inevitable exclusion of nothing-
ness or the nihilum, there seems to be reasonably
evolved before our minds a Being which is
necessary, or self-existent. Eternal, Infinite,
One Simple and Immutable. That Being
certainly cannot be the universe around us, which
has time, and change, and composition, and
finiteness written so plainly all over its constitution.
It is all that the universe is not, and the universe
is all that it is not. And we may note that if
anything were wanted to emphasise the abyssmal
difference between them, and to prove that the
universe cannot be the self-existent being
which our reason demands, it would surely be

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 51

the doctrine of evolution. By its very concept,
evolution postulates and insists upon limitation,
number, succession, change ; all of which are
loud-voiced in declaring that the universe which
they stamp cannot be the one which is Infinite,
One Simple, Immutable, and Eternal, as the
Being which is necessary must be.

It may be urged that in following this line of
thought we merely allow ourselves to become the
sport of our own dialectics, and that at the outset
we have begged our conclusions in the formula-
tion of our definitions, and that when we started
with a being, which is logically alone with the
nihilum, we practically secured all that we wanted,
and the rest of the process has been mere thought-
spinning and word-juggling, without adding any
fresh truth to our original postulate.

But after all, we may feel it is not a very great
logical sin to have at the end of our reasoning
nothing in our conclusions which was not con-
tained in, and did not come out of, our original
premisses. Were it otherwise, we might have
some cause for misgiving. And as to the pre-
misses, or definitions of being and nothingness, if
they can be called definitions, it would be futile to
imagine that they can be treated as arbitrary
assumptions, since they are concepts which lie at
the root of all reality, and appeal as such to the

S2 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

common sense of mankind. They are not cer-
tainly of our making, but are founded in the
nature of things.

A more serious objection, albeit one which is
never likely to have much grip on men of vigor-
ous common sense, is that all such reasoning
may hold good in the realm of mind, but there is
no bridge between the ideal and the real, and
therefore no means of being certain that any
reality corresponds to our reasoning.

The plain answer to this contention, and to

the systems of philosophy which lie behind it, must

ever be that if knowledge is to be knowledge at all

it must be knowledge by means of our minds, and

that the first postulate of all knowledge

^ ^ must be that our minds are valid and

necessary

Postulate of veracious instruments for reaching the

all Know- realities that lie outside of us. If they
ledge

are not, we close the only door to know-
ledge of any kind, for we have no other instru-
ments with which we can work, and if they are
unreliable, their report as to our thoughts, quite
as much as to things outside of us, would not
be worth consideration. No man can jump out
of his subjectivity in order to verify his im-
pressions as to exterior realities, nor would it
in the least serve his purpose even if he could,
seeing that he would have left behind him his

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 53

mental apparatus, by which alone he could carry
out the verification. Any system of episte-
mology which enters on a critique not merely of
the mental process, but of the mental instrument
itself, must be self-refuted, since it uses the very
instrument which it criticises in order to make the
criticism, and it is not easy to see how the criticism
can ever be more trustworthy than the instrument
which the critic has used to make it.

But in truth, as our minds are the only instru-
ments by which we can know realities, whether
inside or outside of us, we must be content to
postulate their validity, or to know nothing, and
condemn ourselves to a state of scepticism and
ignorance. Men of common sense refuse to blow
out the light and sit in the dark just because there
is no absolute proof of the veracity of their eye-
sight.

To those that have once reached the truth of
the Necessary Being, there is no need to say that
in It they have found the bridre be- ^,

1 . . . . The bridge

tween their minds and exterior realities, between the
Our minds are by their very nature Zealand
active images of the Divine mind.
That is why they are intelligent. Things outside
of us are also by their very nature passive images
of the Divine Reality. That is why they are
intelligible. The minds that think and the things

54 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

that are thought about are both analogues of the
Divine Absolute, and things which are analogical
to the same thing are analogical to one another.
Thus between minds and objects there is an
analogical bond which is necessary and onto-
logical, and as such sure and veracious, and this
is the bridge which He who is at once the Divine
Ideality and Reality has built between the two.

It is precisely this bond or bridge which in a
special way enforces the argument of Design.
There is no mechanism — not even that of the
solar system — which can be compared to that of
the human mind as an instrument of thought.
In an ordinary machine we admire the adjustment
of part to part. Higher still is that marvellous
adaptation in nature by which law is adjusted to
law. But highest of all and most marvellous of
all in the mechanism of the Universe is that
ineffable adaptation which has been wrought
between the minds that are ever thinking and
their objects that are ever thought upon —
between the mentalities and the realities — between
the intelligences and the intelligibilities — between
thoughts and things — so that as often as we
observe, things are projected into thought, and as
often as we construct, thoughts are projected into
things, and the two worlds of mind and matter are
fprever clasped and interwoven in the union of the

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 55

Knowing and the Known. It is this adjustment
of thoughts and things which is the dtsign par
excellence^ and more eloquently than all others
it demands the need of an Adjuster, and one who
in Himself is Mind and Reality, and of whom all
Intelligence and Intelligibility wedded here below
are but the reflect and the Hkeness. It is in His
absolute and transcendental Unity, containing
the reason of all things — and not in our poor
fragmentary universe of things here below — that
we find the term of the true Monism with which
our unity-loving souls crave to finish up the syn-
thesis of all that we are and all that we know.
He is the Eternal Monos. **/ am the First, and
I am the Last, and besides Me there is no God''
(Isaias xliv. 6).

VIII. — j^sthetic Argument,

One of the most palpable facts of human
experience is that there are things which are
beautiful, and that it gives joy to behold them.
It may be a majestic landscape, or a master-
piece of painting or sculpture or of musical
composition, but we feel that in such things
there is beauty, and that it elevates us, and
gladdens us, and draws our souls towards it.
Let u$ ask the reason why. If we analyse the

56 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

idea of beauty, it is evident that it is the combina-
tion of two things — Unity and Variety. If for
variety, we were to say wealth of being, or wealth
of formal entity, we should express our meaning
more fully and more precisely. The most beautiful
being is that in which the greatest variety, viz.,
the greatest amount of being (not mere quanti-
tative but qualitative or formal being) is held
together or co-ordinated in the closest degree of
unity. Here we can see at once why beautiful
things give joy. If an amount of being were
altogether devoid of unity, it would be chaos,
and beyond the reach of our minds. It would
be intangible or unintelligible. It is just by the
unity which is in a thing that it is mentally
get-at-able. The mind itself is an active unity —
active with the highest kind of activity which is
life, and the highest kind of life, which is intelli-
gence. Intelligence is living unity with the
power of reading unity, and all things by their
unity. We try to express all that by the single
word spirit. Because it is living unity it has a
mysterious way of getting into things by means
of their unity, and by a vital act seeing them in
itself, and that is the process which we call
knowing or understanding. It follows that the
more unity there is in a thing, the more clearly
and readily the mind understands it. It is by

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 57

unifications, or general ideas — grasps of unity —
that we gain our knowledge, sometimes chaining
the unities as when we syllogise, or at other
times simply contemplating their oneness by an
act of intuition. In like manner, when an object
which is beautiful comes before us, we apprehend
it and get it into our souls by means of its unity,
and the greater the measure of its unity, the
clearer will be the apprehension. The greater
the variety or wealth of being which is brought
under the unity, the greater will be the soul-
grasp, and consequently the greater the joy of
the soul. For the two things which the soul
loves and feeds upon are Unity and Being — or
I ought rather to say. Being through Unity.
It itself is Spirit or Unity-Being, and it delights
in finding that which is the likeness of itself.
It is, so to speak, a glimpse of its own beauty.
The more intense the unity, and the more there
is of variety, or muchness of being, the greater
its delight becomes. Hence beauty gives joy
owing to its very kinship to the soul. The
unity, or self-compatibility which is inherent in
things by which we understand them, or by
which they are thinkable, is their ** thinkable
quality," or species intelligibilisy and it is by it
that we grasp or enter into them and feel all the
joy of the beautiful and the true,

58 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

There is thus a very close connection between
intelligence and the appreciation of the beautiful
If I place a beautiful masterpiece of some great
painter before a dog, little notice will paid to it.
If I place it before a savage, endowed with an
intelligence, lacking in cultivation perhaps, but
therefore radically differing from the brute, the
painting may be admired, but possibly not so
much as the gilt frame. The aesthetic power to
admire is there, but it may not be evoked by the
painting in question. If I put it before a person
who is not indeed a savage, but is ignorant or
uncultivated, he may find pleasure in the work of
art, but possibly not so much as in some brightly
coloured print which would appeal more to
unformed taste. If I put it before some one of
high intelligence and artistic culture, the beauty
of the painting will be felt and appreciated.
Thus the conception of beauty, once found in
human intelligence, is seen to transcend the
sensible apprehension of the mere brute, and at
the same time to be more recognised and relished
the higher we ascend in the scale of cultured and
refined mind. If upon a desert island I pick up
a scrap of paper upon which a few words are
written, I know that some intelligent being must
have been the writer. Why ? Because, if it is
only by intelligence that I can read the words,

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 59

much more must it be only by intelligence that
the words can have been written for me to read
them. The writing, in fact, is the appeal which
one intelligence makes to another. If, then,
beauty is stamped so clearly, so widely, so
magnificently upon the universe, and if it speaks
so intensely to the depths of the human soul, it
is evident that even as intelligence is needed to
appreciate it, so intelligence must have been
needed to put it there to be appreciated. In other
words, if beauty be a handwriting upon the open
page of the universe, which only intelligence can
read, it must also be one which only intelligence
can have written. All beauty is the appeal to
our intelligence from the Supreme Intelligence
— the Infinite whose oneness is the source of all
unity, whether thinking or thinkable, and whose
fulness of being is the source of all wealth of
variety. It is the shadow of the Infinite beauty
cast upon creation, and the only reason why
one thing is more beautiful than another is
because it has more of the joy-giving likeness of
God.

In the foregoing arguments I have attempted
to sketch, at least in bald outline, some of the
reasons which help to convince us of the existence
of God. But happily, God, like light, is His
own revealer, and He, both by the light of

6o THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

reason and the light of His own life, which we

call grace, writes His witness vitally in the soul

of man. That testimony, just because

Spiritual j^ jg yji-^j IS more than can be put

Experience , ^ ^

into words, or formulated in the set
terms of an argument. Also, because it is
vital, and supernaturally vital, it will require
not mere intellectual capacity, but qualities of
heart which are in harmony with God, to receive
it. No doubt, men will always feel about their
Maker more than they can easily utter, but as
in the case of the crystal and the sunlight, it is
inevitable that how much or how little they may
feel will depend upon the state of the soul, and
its spiritual eyesight or power to assimilate
the light will be in the measure of its moral
nearness to the light and to the Light-giver.

In the trend of modern thought much value
is rightly attached to the evidential value of
experience. It is upon experience that modern
science takes its stand, and carries from triumph
to triumph the magnificent work which it
accomplishes for the well-being of mankind.
But physical experience is naturally limited to
physical phenomena, and modern science does
its work wearing spectacles, which by their very
nature cannot carry beyond secondary causes.
To all the experience of sense-perception, the

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 6i

First Cause must remain invisible and inaccessible.
God cannot be caught in the tests of the
laboratory any more than He can be formulated
on the blackboard. And that not because He
is not, but precisely because He is, and is what
He is and must be. A God that could be so
detected by sense, or compressed into a finite
formula, would be within measurable distance of
us, and upon the upper end of the same intellectual
plane as ourselves — He would certainly not be the
First Cause, would not be the Necessary Being,
would not be transcendental — all of which are
but so many ways of saying that He would not
be God at all. When, therefore, certain men of
science tell us that in all their chemical or
biological researches they have failed to find
the faintest trace of a Supreme Being, we can
only say that no one in possession of their senses
ever imagined that they would or could, and that
their testimony can only be welcome to us as
their contribution, helping us in their way, to
prove the transcendentalism, or what Scripture
calls the invisibility of the King of the Ages
— a quality which we feel to be one of the most
necessary in the elements which enter into the
concept of God.

Life, however, is broader than the laboratory
or the blackboard, and it would be surely a poor

62 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

and narrow view of experience to limit it to one
or the other. We have all in our own hearts a
higher and wider theatre of experience. We
have there, written in the life-record, all that
we have felt of God working within us, of all
God's dealing with us, of all that God has done
for us in the great crises of our life, in hours of
trial, temptation, sorrow, or of happiness, in the
shade and shine of the years through which we
have passed. We feel, more profoundly than words
could utter, all that He has been to us, and all that
we have been to Him. If experience be the best
foundation of our knowledge, such life-experience
written in the depths of our souls is to us the
highest form of experience, and certainly one
more telling, more intimate, and more secure
than any which is likely to be found within the
walls of the laboratory. If it were but the
experience of a single soul, its evidence to that
soul would be all-sufficient. But what we feel
is felt not less intensely by millions of human
hearts around us ; has been felt by millions from
generation to generation in the inner — and what,
after all, is the more real — history of mankind.
With this volume of testimony, soul-deep and
world-wide, within us and around us, we can
rest secure in the consciousness of our God, and
read in Him the glad meaning of our lives here.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 63

and the glorious meaning of our lives hereafter,
when the eyes, from which have been wiped away
all earthly tears, shall ''see the good things of the
Lord in the land of the living'' (Ps. xxvi* 13).

APPENDIX

WORKS ON THEISM THAT MAY BE CONSULTED

St Thomas Aquinas. — Siimma Theologies*

Summa Contra Gentiles,
Bernard Boedder. — Theologia Rationalts,
Stonyhurst Manuals. — Natural Theology,

First Principles,
L. von Hammerstein. — Foundations of Faith,
R. Clarke. — Dialogue on the Existence of God,
S. Reinstadler. — Elementa Philosophice Scholasticce.
Benedict Lorenzelli. — Philosophice Theoreticce Institutiones,
Cardinal Manning. — Religio Viatoris,
Professor Flint. — Theism; Anti-Theistic Theories,
Professor Caldecott. — The Philosophy of Religion,
Rev. C. Harris.— Pro Fide,

^^jfFORNjA^

PRIKTBD BT

OLIVER AMD BOTD

EDIKBUROB

CALIF'"

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed.!

lenewed.boQks aj

22Ap?58WW

are subject to immediate recall.

REC'D CD

APR 2l 186S

■^5^

eowvtf

RETCr) LC)

2Jm'fi4M0

REC'D LD

JULl '64-9 .AM

LD 21A-50m-8,'57
(C8481sl0)476B

General Library

University of California

Berkeley

^B 230Cc^

164017

\